As an alumnus of a previous LEAF programme, you are likely to be familiar with the ITN framework developed utilising research produced by Open Philanthropy. This framework holds that the difference in impact generated by an additional person's contributions to a given cause area can be assessed based on four key factors - the scale (importance) of the problem, its neglectedness and its tractability, alongside the personal fit of the individual to their chosen position. Other factors not explicitly featured in this framework, but which may be worth considering, are the likelihood of the problem becoming a reality, the ethical dilemmas associated with working to mitigate that problem and the response capacity of target populations.
'Personal fit' is the most subjective factor - defined as an individual's suitability for work (and potential to excel) in a particular position. If they are choosing to work on a particular issue purely because they feel that they are obligated to do so, this might result in poorer professional performance and, therein, negligible impact within this cause area. As research performed within Oxford University's Saïd Business School concluded, a person’s happiness and emotional wellbeing can be conclusively linked to their performance at work (with happier workers exhibiting a thirteen percent increase in productivity). In the case of British telecommunications company BT, workers who consistently reported more positive results on a five-point happiness scale were found to both make more calls per hour and to convert more calls to sales within their working days. According to a 2023 Current Psychology study, an increased baseline level of happiness has been linked to improved visuospatial memory and increased cognitive processing speed - both of which are neurological functions vital to exceptional professional performance. Furthermore, an individual's pre-existing strengths and weaknesses do also impact their suitability for a role. For example, a person who has struggled with mathematics and computer science their entire life and who has shown no previous interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence would be unlikely to perform well in a role associated with AI governance. For this reason, it is important to select both an impactful cause area and a position in which you have the capacity and inclination to do impactful work.
The likelihood that a chosen issue should manifest tangible consequences which would subsequently affect a large proportion of the global population is significant in determining its importance. The risk posed by catastrophic pandemics of natural origin, for example, is substantial, as exemplified by the ongoing destruction of global biosecurity frameworks associated with the coronavirus pandemic. It is far from inconceivable that a pathogen should spill over from trafficked wildlife, resulting in an outbreak - and that this outbreak should be transmitted internationally as an indirect consequence of globalisation (a phenomenon oberved during recent Ebola and SARS epidemics). However, the risk posed by individual malevolent actors is far less tangible. Whilst it is certainly possible for an individual to sequence and collate the genome of a highly infectious pathogen, it is somewhat unlikely that such an individual would successfully manage the production and dissemination of that pathogen on an international scale (once again, refer to the failings of the Aum Shinrikyo death cult in aerosolising anthrax). This is not to say that the risk posed by bioterrorists is dismissible - far from it - merely that this risk is less urgent than that which is immediately posed by zoonotic spillover due to the associated obstacles.
Furthermore, when evaluating one’s impact potential within a chosen cause area, it is important to explore the issue from an ethical standpoint. Could your work potentially harm others (either indirectly or otherwise)? Does your work violate ethical guidelines, or endanger fundamental human rights ? Does your work cause harm to animals, or to sthe livelihoods of indigenous populations? Could your research be misused, potentially leading to the creation of a bioweapon, or another such weapon of mass destruction? Whilst vital to developing our understanding of pathogen function and transmission, gain-of-function (GOF) research into EPPPs could pose a significant risk to the global biosecurity network - with one study of Chinese CDC laboratories revealing that around 40% of lower-level workers had failed to receive adequate biosecurity training, and over 20% of BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4 - a classification assigned to projects involving aerosol-transmitted pathogens capable of causing severe to fatal infections for which no treatments/vaccinations are available) laboratories failing to participate in regular screening processes. You may therefore feel discouraged from pursuing gain-of-function research - or may conclude that the benefits of your work outweigh the potential consequences of its publication. You, as an aspiring scientist, would be required to weigh these ethical concerns prior to engagement with GOF research.
A medical career can be extremely rewarding - offering an individual the opportunity to work directly with patients, actively preventing the worsening of their conditions and, in time, facilitating their recoveries. However, certain estimates suggest that the net lifetime impact of an additional doctor's work in the United States amounts to around three lives saved, as measured in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). It could, therein, be considered unethical to pursue a medical career when other options could lead to significantly more measurable impact - i.e. earning to give, working in policymaking or simply working as a medical doctor in a less economically developed country (LEDC) as a consequence of research shortages and poorer medical infrastructure. That said, it could also be argued that the significance of those three lives cannot be undermined - and that the function of a doctor within a medical team far exceeds that which has been stated. The impact of a medical professional's work does also vary greatly by specialisation - meaning that the 'three' figure could be flawed and may not apply to particular specialisms (e.g. cardiothoracic surgeons). Furthermore, doctors in high-income countries typically earn significantly more than the national median salary - with the national average yearly earnings for a cardiologist in the United States falling at around 477,925 USD, over a median salary of 66,790 USD for men and 55,240 USD for women. This income ‘inflation’ provides a key opportunity for wealthier doctors to meaningfully engage in earning to give philanthropy. In this example, as before, there is no clear right or wrong answer. A career is an almost entirely personal choice, but as with the selection of just about anything else important, there are inherent ethical dilemmas associated with that choice.
The final factor I would recommend for review is that of the response capacity of target populations - i.e. the ability of a population to co-operate with public health countermeasures. During the coronavirus pandemic, a lack of public health awareness and the appropriate provision of information contributing to vaccine demystification within certain communities resulted in lowered vaccine uptake (with an 85% vaccine uptake in Vermont, as compared with a 58.9% vaccine uptake in Missouri). Cultural factors may also impact a population's willingness to comply with public health guidance - for example, during the Ebola outbreaks in the 2010s, West African communities struggled to adhere to isolation/decontamination advice as certain local funerary practices involved physical contact with the body of the deceased and the washing of one’s hands alongside other mourners in a common bowl (that which may continue to harbour the pathogen). Additionally, in LEDCs, healthcare infrastructure is often underdeveloped - with reduced access to the cold chains required to ensure vaccine viability and fewer healthcare workers available to administer vaccinations and other treatments. Transport systems in these regions may also be inadequate, deterring individuals experiencing severe symptoms from reaching a hospital or clinic through which they might receive treatment.The complex interplay between these - and many other - population characteristics can significantly affect the success and efficacy of projects within a chosen cause area, rendering their evaluation a key moral and practical priority.
Mandatory Resources 🦠
A Biosecurity Fundamentals Resource Outlining Project Types
An 80,000 Hours Video Outline of the ITN Framework
“How To Make Hard Choices”: A TED Talk by Ruth Chang
A Bath Spa University Guide to ‘Helping People Careers’
“The Art of Making a Difference”: A TED Talk by Andy Gilbert